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A review by sdloomer
Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco
3.0
Rating this three stars doesn't feel like doing this enough justice; there were more parts that I truly enjoyed than not, but some (especially the end) that I couldn't reconcile with, thus the rating.
This would have been closer to four stars, maybe even five, if not for these issues: pacing, character relevance, and, to get a little specific, the whole reveal of Vittoria's killer in just a few pages near the very end, left a very bland taste in my mouth despite the book's solid beginning and (most of the) middle.
Important action sequences and reveals were cut down to maybe four or five paragraphs at most, while introspection--important for character development, I understand--was turned all the way up to eleven to make for increasingly long internal monologues in situations that didn't make sense and slowed the plot way down. Days and weeks pass in single sentences, jerking the reader from one time to the next without any real reason, and while I understand this is sometimes necessary, this happened several times throughout the book.
During my most disappointing part of the entire book, the reveal of Vittoria's murderer and subsequently the ending, it occurred to me that a lot of the supernatural characters--Wrath and the Umbra demon and Envy and such--were unnecessary. If you replaced any of them with a human counterpart, the plot would have been the same. The buildup and clues that led to the reveal were eventually a red herring, and although it was a twist I didn't exactly see coming, it completely illegitimated any of these so-called 'clues'. The killer's motive was weak and ultimately barely related to what the rest of the novel was trying to moving forward with, and it completely baffled me as to why it ended this way. It made finding the murderer seem like a minor side-quest instead of a major plot point.
I hope book two is rather better in this case, as the beginning of this one was so, so good (along with all the descriptions of the food!), and because I'm still going to read it when it comes out. Please, please, please do Vittoria some real justice there, because she deserves it!
This would have been closer to four stars, maybe even five, if not for these issues: pacing, character relevance, and, to get a little specific, the whole reveal of Vittoria's killer in just a few pages near the very end, left a very bland taste in my mouth despite the book's solid beginning and (most of the) middle.
Important action sequences and reveals were cut down to maybe four or five paragraphs at most, while introspection--important for character development, I understand--was turned all the way up to eleven to make for increasingly long internal monologues in situations that didn't make sense and slowed the plot way down. Days and weeks pass in single sentences, jerking the reader from one time to the next without any real reason, and while I understand this is sometimes necessary, this happened several times throughout the book.
During my most disappointing part of the entire book, the reveal of Vittoria's murderer and subsequently the ending, it occurred to me that a lot of the supernatural characters--Wrath and the Umbra demon and Envy and such--were unnecessary. If you replaced any of them with a human counterpart, the plot would have been the same. The buildup and clues that led to the reveal were eventually a red herring, and although it was a twist I didn't exactly see coming, it completely illegitimated any of these so-called 'clues'. The killer's motive was weak and ultimately barely related to what the rest of the novel was trying to moving forward with, and it completely baffled me as to why it ended this way. It made finding the murderer seem like a minor side-quest instead of a major plot point.
I hope book two is rather better in this case, as the beginning of this one was so, so good (along with all the descriptions of the food!), and because I'm still going to read it when it comes out. Please, please, please do Vittoria some real justice there, because she deserves it!